“The Chinese need to learn that public spaces aren’t garbage dumps”, said Raymond Zhou. During a recent national holiday, visitors dropped a staggering 32 tons of litter in Tiananmen Square in just four days. Beijing’s army of street cleaners rushed in and quickly cleaned up the mess. But large areas of the country don’t have those resources, and by the […]
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Melting ice in the north and south – Artic, Antarctica, North America, South America, Europe, and Asia – are expected to raise the sea levels at an extreme rate. Scientists have been keeping track of the rise since the 1870’s and the sea levels have risen by about 8 inches. If this rise keeps going many of the coastal areas […]
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The evidence for a new geological epoch which marks the impact of human activity on Earth is now overwhelming according to a recent paper by an international group of geo-scientists. The Anthropocene, which is argued to start in the mid-20th Century, is marked by the spread of materials such as aluminum, concrete, plastic, fly ash and fallout from nuclear testing […]
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Sophrony Kirilov pulls hard on the strings of the heavy Russian bells from inside the world’s southernmost Eastern Orthodox church, calling to Mass anybody wanting to pray on this remote Antarctic island. The 38-year-old Russian priest is clad in a loose black robe and a vest dotted with patches of penguins and seals, marking his four years of service […]
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“Knowing what a chicken looks like and what all the chickens before it looked like doesn’t help us to understand the egg,” says Taras Gerya. The ETH Professor of Geophysics uses this metaphor to address plate tectonics and the early history of the Earth. The Earth’s lithosphere is divided into several plates that are in constant motion, and today’s geologists […]
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Climate change may have helped to alter the course of history. A period of extreme and unprecedented cooling in the northern hemisphere 1,500 years ago may have reduced the eastern Roman empire, set the stage for a famine and a devastating pandemic that killed millions, and favored the rise of the Islamic forces that created the Arab empire. The so-called Little […]
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Sea ice is formed from ocean water that freezes. Because the oceans consist of saltwater, this occurs at about minus 1.8 degrees Celsius (28.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Most Antarctic sea ice occurs annually, meaning it forms in the winter and melts during the summer. Sea ice regulates exchanges of heat, moisture and salinity in the polar oceans. It insulates the relatively warm […]
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Astrobiologists searching the heavens for extraterrestrial life have a simple motto: “Follow the water, ”says The Washington Post. Water is an essential ingredient in all earthly biochemistry, so scientists believe it’s logical to look for life first on planets and moons with liquid water.New data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft indicate that Enceladus, a tiny, ice-encrusted moon orbiting Saturn, may be […]
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Millions of years ago Antarctica was not where it is located today. It started off in the mid-latitudes and started moving about an inch to two inches a year to the bottom of the earth. The continent also had palms and baobab trees and reptiles and marsupials. The mountains, valleys and inlets are still located on the continent. Antarctica measures […]
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In forests worldwide, drought consistently has had a more detrimental impact on the growth and survival of larger trees, new research shows. In addition, while the death of small trees may affect the dominance of trees in a landscape, the death of large trees has a far worse impact on the ecosystem and climate’s health, especially due to the important […]
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